Mineral rightsJill and Patrick McNicol, owners of Cool Springs Farm in Columbiana County, are expected to sue Columbia Gas Transmission this week to challenge the utility's claim to lucrative mineral rights on their property. Jill McNicol explained last week how the couple learned a 47-year-old lease was standing in the way of cashing in on Ohio's Utica shale play.

An invisible line traces a 25,000-acre oval in the hills of Columbiana County that separates the haves from the have-nots.

Outside the line are instantly wealthy corn, soybean and dairy farmers. Inside are folks waiting for their windfall.

Dozens of the landowners are blocked from cashing in on energy-rich shale below their property because of an underground gas storage field between the more than mile-deep shale and their pastures.

Many of the farmers were surprised to learn that their acres sit on top of a sandstone repository called the Brinker Storage Field that is leased by Columbia Gas Transmission.

Jill McNicol, a veterinarian, and her husband Patrick, a high school math teacher, didn't know about the storage field when Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy swept through Columbiana County in the summer of 2010. The energy giant moved at lightening speed, nailing down as much promising shale terrain as possible.

Scott Shaw, The Plain DealerJill and Patrick McNicol were in line for a signing bonus of more than $375,000 from Chesapeake Energy for allowing the company to drill for oil and gas on their 65-acre farm. Then they found that old gas storage leases held by Columbia Gas Transmission may block their windfall.

The McNicols, who live on a rolling spread they call Cool Springs Farm with their two children, five dogs, some sturdy Connermara ponies and other animals, agreed on a signing bonus from Chesapeake. They were in line for more than $375,000 to lease the mineral rights under their 65 acres near the village of Leetonia, about 25 miles south of Youngstown. But the deal was on the condition that Chesapeake got clear title to the mineral rights.

When Chesapeake circled back for more thorough property research, it found that land in the Brinker region was encumbered by long-standing gas leases.

Those property owners outside the storage field received signing bonuses as high as $5,800 an acre for letting Chesapeake drill for oil and gas in the dark shale.

But deals with the McNicols and others inside the Brinker footprint were off. The McNicols remained tied to a lease held by Columbia Gas Transmission that pays about $4 an acre.

"If they drilled on our land, we would get 200 bucks, period. No royalties," Jill McNicol said.

The Brinker leases date back to the 1940s, '50s and '60s when a predecessor to Columbia Gas Transmission, called Manufacturers Light & Heat, dug down 1,000 feet to reach natural gas in the Berea Sandstone layer.

Scott Shaw, PDPatrick and Jill McNicol stand near a 4-foot valve leading to an underground gas storage field on a neighbor's farm in central Columbiana County. The McNicols and others with property above the storage field say they should be able to lease their mineral rights for shale exploration and drilling.

After the deposits were gone, the company piped gas supplies back into the depleted well during warm weather and siphoned gas out during peak winter use. Utilities also use aquifers and salt caverns for gas storage.

Columbia Gas Transmission became the eventual successor to the leases. When property in the Brinker zone changed hands, the new owners -- often unwittingly -- became the parties doing the leasing.

Columbia spokesman Mike Banassaid the leasesare valid and on public file at the local courthouse in Lisbon.

The white stone courthouse on Lisbon's town square, capped by a dome with a statue of Justice, has had a spate of new filings since mid-April: Lawsuits against Columbia Gas by 24 property owners trying to terminate storage leases.

The McNicols are expected to sue the utility this week.

The landowners question whether Columbia Gas Transmission is actually using their property for storage and is living up to other terms of the leases.

But the main thing, said the landowners' attorney, Sean Scullin of Scullin & Cunning in Boardman, is that Columbia Gas shouldn't have production rights. The leases were written in an era of shallow drilling, he said, that never anticipated being able to bore down 6,000 to 8,000 feet, fracturing Utica shale beds to release oil and gas.

Columbia Gas Transmission has 14 fields spanning 478,000 acres in Ohio. Dominion East Ohio declined to detail its gas storage except to say it is the largest system in the country and includes fields in Northeast Ohio.

Jill McNicol says she thinks her farm may be straddling the Brinker boundary line.Her only map of the reservoir is inexact. She documents what's happening to surrounding farmsteads as best she can, using orange and yellow markers on township plat maps at the kitchen counter.

With a vet practice that keeps her hustling between clinics in Salem and Gerard, deciphering the fine points of energy leases is not what she planned for the past year.

Banas, the Columbia Gas spokesman, said the utility's Brinker leases often include the right to produce natural gas.

Columbia Gas Transmission drove that point home Friday when it filed an agreement to transferthe right to drill for oil and gas on about 14,000 acres in the Brinker field to a sister company, NiSource Energy Ventures. Both are units of NiSource Inc.

If Columbia subleases production rights to drillers, the landowner "frequently gets a royalty on the gas produced," Banas said. "However, there is no requirement that Columbia sublease its production rights in order to keep the lease in effect."

Driving around central Columbiana County last week, McNicol pointed out early signs of the oil and gas grab. A road with fresh gravel to handle "soup truck" tankers hauling fracking sand and fluids. The telltale white pickups of drilling crews. A chain-link fence around an empty field.

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